Shiny Things
On to Mars!
It's not enough to write stories about Mars. Sometimes I want to see what I'm talking about. This is a steeple-ship featured in my upcoming Mars tales. And because I'm a keener, I'm creating a version that will be printable on my 3D printer.
The drawing at left was done in LibreOffice Draw, part of the LibreOffice office suite. That on the right was done in FreeCAD.
Bob Heinlein
I found this quote recently on social media:
The trouble with Bob Heinlein is that he doesn't need to write. When I want a story from him, the first thing I have to do is think up something he would like to have, like a swimming pool. The second thing is to sell him on the idea of having it. The third thing is to convince him he should write a story to get the money to pay for it, instead of building it himself.
—John W. Campbell, Jr.
I can't speak to the veracity of the quote. The earliest mention of it comes from a page at Reason, which contains a review of Heinlein's novel The Number of the Beast. According to Reason, the article dates from 1980. The author is F. Wilson, a rather cryptic monicker.
I remember finding The Number of the Beast in my high school library, along with plenty of other novels by him, and short story collections.
I have read vast quantities of Robert A. Heinlein's work, and loved the vast majority of it. Heinlein wrote at a time when it was much easier to make a living as a writer — even as a writer of short stories.
It's much more difficult these days to actually make a living at the game, but it's always worth doing.